Changelog

0.2: Modifications to apply the policy project wide instead of specific signatories and some simplifications from RahulSundaram

0.3: Add a section for third party repos

Repository Collaboration Policy

This is a policy for official Fedora contributors that produce add-on RPM packages for the following operating systems:

Fedora

Red Hat Enterprise Linux and compatible derivatives (via EPEL)

Statement Of Goals

Fedora Project contributors have as a high level objective the development of packages for the targeted operating systems which are technically sound, robust and give an excellent user experience. Whilst acknowledging that "mixing repositories" will always be somewhat unpredictable due to differing goals and standards amoung contributors, Fedora Project aims to promote informed choice amongst users by avoiding unnecessary user inconvenience when switching between repositories with similar packages.

Specific Goals

Fedora Project agrees to promote the following standards amongst their contributors:

Contributors need to make an effort to check if there are packages in third party repositories that would conflict with any new packages submitted to the official repository and if so establish contact with the maintainers of packages in other third party repositories.

If there is any necessity to retain competing packages keep them as similar as possible, particularly in the sense of RPM dependencies and file locations, such that upgrades or migrations between different repositories are not unnecessarily difficult for users.

Avoid wherever possible publishing packages which are egregiously incompatible with packages from other contributors, without sound technical reasons.

Summary

This is merely a public acknowledgement that Fedora contributors need to work with other contributors within the official and third party repositories and does not force anyone to do anyone to do anything though it would be courteous to follow the policy to enable colloboration between different repositories so as to serve end users better. For the purpose of this policy, Fedora Project treats all contributors as peers and no hierarchy is implied or required. If contributors are unable to reach consensus with other maintainers involving any packages they are requested to contact FESCo to help solve any technical or political issues.

Third Party Repository Maintainers

If you are a third party repository maintainer and if support this policy of colloboration with Fedora do express your feedback explicitly. Additional feedback is welcome.